


The pillars of the earth

by Ischa



Series: The pillars of the earth [1]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s04e18 The Wall, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ischa/pseuds/Ischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're trapped in Sylar's mind and things start to change between them...</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Peter doesn't come back to the apartment for four days and nights. Sylar can hear him bang against the wall day and night, night and day. He can't block it out. It's always there. A vicious sound that tells him just one thing: I want out of here. Now.<br/>It's the only feeling Peter has right now.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The pillars of the earth

**Title:** The pillars of the earth  
 **Pairing:** Sylar/Peter  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Summary:** They're trapped in Sylar's mind and things start to change between them...  
 **Warning(s):** angst, sex , spoilers up to The Wall  
 **Author’s Notes:** Heroes fic. I don't even know! The Wall made me do it. Title by Ken Follett. Quotes by: Papa Roach, My Chemical Romance and Darren Hayes. Dialogue quotes from Heroes.  
 **Word Count:** 7.710  
 **Beta:** melanth0 (thank you SO much!)  
 **Disclaimer:** Don’t know, don’t own, not real

\--+--  
 **~Chapter One~  
King of the wasteland**

~+~  
The world is an empty place. Not waste. Sylar is not king of a wasteland. King of _the_ wasteland. He isn't anything. He just is. Day after day after day. Nights turn to days turn to nights, to days, to nights again and there is no one except him. He doesn't know what happened. He has no memory of the...whatever it was that made him the last person on earth. Surely Claire should have survived, right? She is like him. She is immortal. She should be here somewhere, but he didn't find her.  
Just empty streets, empty buildings. A city left for death and decay. The only company he has are books. There aren't any other living things, not even insects. The only sounds are his own, everything that changes is his doing, except the weather and the constant change of day to night, night to day.  
His days remain the same. Waking up, a shower (when he feels like it, not that often anymore), breakfast, out of the apartment to look for food and water. He thinks he can survive until he dies, but then he remembers that he can't die. Even if all his other powers are gone, he is pretty sure he can't die. Something inside him screams and rages whenever the thought surfaces from the depths in which he tries to bury it. But he never was good at lying to himself.  
He is good at forgetting things for a while, years even. It gives him some kind of peace. Enough to live another day in sanity. But on the other hand, how can he know he is sane? How can one person know that if there is no one to reflect his behaviour? To judge, to criticise? To approve?  
The conclusion is, he thinks, that he can't know if he is sane. Not that he was sure of this before. (But then he had people who told him that he in fact wasn't sane. That he was a psychopath. That he still is a psychopath. You don't change from one day to another. He is a leopard. They don't change their spots.)  
On some days, when the sky is grey (but the sky is often grey), he wishes he could die. Wishes he could kill himself and be done with it. He could ram something deep into that spot and be done with it for a while. It's not death exactly, but close. The problem is that he can't remember where it is.  
He should know that, he knew before, shifted it so no one else would know and now he can't remember and is stuck here. Day after day, after day.  
When he comes back at the break of night, sometimes in the late evenings he puts the cans and bottles away and sits down on the kitchen floor. His back leaning on the counter or refrigerator (that doesn't work, it's silent like everything in this place), his feet stretched long on the cold floor, thinking that he lived another day. After those few minutes of silence interrupted only by his own breathing, he gets up and goes into the bathroom. Strips his clothes, takes a shower when he's feeling like it, takes a piss, washes his face, brushes his teeth and then goes over to the bedroom. He doesn't bother with clothes when he's going to sleep. He doesn't exactly know why he bothers with them when he is awake. Trained behaviour maybe. He doesn't know. He doesn't really care, either.  
He reads a few chapters of a book, there are so many, but he still doesn't think they will last his lifetime, by a candle and then sleeps a few hours until it's dawn again.  
When he wakes up the day starts exactly like the last.

~+~  
He counts. Nearly everything.  
The bottles of water (he needs to know how long they will last), the food (same reason as the water), books he’s read (how many by an author, how many in the last week, last month, last year), days he wore the same shirt (it doesn't really matter, but he does it anyway), the last time he took a shower (because of half remembered memories of his mother's voice), clocks he fixed (just for the pleasure of it), days he’s spent alone already (because maybe it's salvation, maybe it keeps him sane).  
There are things he doesn't count as well.  
How many times he screamed Claire's name (he doesn't want to know that), how often he stood on the windowsill (same reason), the times the shower worked (because the refrigerator doesn't and it doesn't add up), conversations with the mirror (slow slide into insanity), sleepless nights (wishing for someone to touch).

~+~  
He knows every corner of the district he lives in. Even if he doesn't think it deserves the word 'living.' It's more like surviving, like a slow slide into insanity hour after hour. But that could be despair speaking. He can't remember the last time he felt despair. Maybe it's the first time ever.  
Even the memory of his mother's death (his real mother, not the one who raised him) is just a sharp spike of hate. On good days, it’s a dull pain deep in his guts.  
Sometimes when he's lying awake at night, he thinks of Elle. Of all the people he killed, she was one of those who deserved to die (if another human being can judge that, that is and people all over the world do, think they have the right, he thinks that too). He misses her in an abstract way. Like he misses bees and stray cats. Like he misses everything, _anything_ that isn't him.  
He misses her heat and desperation, the curve of her hip and her harsh breathing and long legs around his body, like a wine trying to make him hers. She was successful for a short while, but she wasn't for him and he wasn't for her, and now he knows he should have killed her earlier. She was too much like him in ways where it mattered, in ways they shouldn't have been.

  
 **~Chapter Two~  
I woke up in a dream today**

~+~  
The days are accompanied by the ticking of clocks. Seconds, minutes, hours. The same every day. Every night (he can hear them when he's not sleeping, when he _can't_ sleep).  
And then there is a disturbance in the dull, soft, quiet tick tock of the hands of the clocks. A hard, angry sound. Something that's outside of him. Something he didn't make, something that can't be (BECAUSE he didn't make that sound).  
Metal on pavement.  
He grabs his jacket and is out of the door in a few minutes. It doesn't matter what it is, because it's something. Something that isn't him or silence.  
The streets are empty, like they always are, the buildings big and endless like pillars holding up the sky.

“Hello!” It's stupid. So stupid, he's done it before. It didn't...it was pointless to scream and scream and hope and his throat was sore for days, maybe weeks (he lost a few of them, because he couldn't deal with the silence. A slide into nights and barely there days). “Hello!?” It's more of a question this time, and he is ready to give up, his mind (after all the years, all the silence) is playing tricks on him. It wouldn't be the first time.  
And then it's there again: metal on pavement, and as he turns around it's Peter. Of all people. Of all people who could maybe have survived it's Peter. Of all empty cities he came here, he thinks and nearly laughs hysterically. There can't be a person on earth who could possibly hate him more than Peter Petrelli.

~+~  
He meant it when he said he would kill Peter if he should follow him. He meant it and he still does. He just doesn't know if he can. Peter is the only real person (if he is real, you can never forget to doubt yourself, everything and everyone) he's seen in three years.  
He doesn't believe Peter. Not one word.  
And he’s right. They are stuck. They are trapped in this world forever. Well, not Peter. Peter after all can die. Sylar envies him that and so much more, but this, this ability to die, this he envies him the most right now.  
Sylar is the only one who is cursed. Even if Peter's face tells him another story. Peter clearly thinks that he is cursed as well. Spending the rest of his life here in an empty world with Sylar, who killed his brother.  
Life is funny and the world is a scary place.  
Sylar never thought that it would end like this. In some twisted way this is clearly justice. If he could die he would die by Peter's hand. An eye for an eye.  
But he can't die, and besides Peter is here to save him. Peter is here to save Emma. Peter is here, because Peter is a hero. It doesn't matter that he has no power. Peter is a hero, and Sylar knows that (Gabriel knows that), because he is a good person (and Sylar hates him for it, has every second he knew him).

“I'm not a saviour,” he says again. Peter lets his hand fall. Interrupts the brief human contact they shared a few seconds before and keeps silent.  
Maybe he’s thinking. Sylar doesn't know. He might be planning their escape from here. From Sylar's mind. If it's really true and Sylar doesn't believe it. Not for one second. Because how could this be his own chosen prison? How much must someone hate himself to think of something like this? How twisted must a mind be?  
The answer to this is there. Lying like a book on a table. He just needs to pick it up. It's written across the walls, he just needs to read it.  
It's his. His mind could (would) come up with something like this as a punishment and it would be a good one on top of this. This is his nightmare. His own personal hell. (And he always suspected that hell is personal).

  
 **~Chapter Three~  
Last resort **

~+~  
Peter stays. He has no choice. But he doesn't talk. Not to Sylar. Not to himself. He sometimes sits on the roof, day and night, night and day, the hours ticking away. Sometimes they run like sand through his fingers. Sometimes they are too long and everything feels like it's behind glass or under water. The light of reality dances just out of reach.  
Still, he is not alone. He can hear Peter move around the apartment. Can hear him outside the window. Can hear him nearly everywhere, because this is a silent world. How could he not?

~+~  
Silence is Peter's resort. It's not something Sylar can understand.  
Days become weeks and then a month and still Peter doesn't talk. Barely acknowledges Sylar being there as well.  
He never hated Peter more than now. Now that he is here and still doesn't talk. Doesn't give him the thing he needs: another voice, another human being. Three fucking years. How long can he stay here? Silent like a statue? Like the buildings, the streets, the sky?  
Silent like a god Sylar doesn't believe in anyway.

~+~  
He is determined not to make the first move, but Peter's behaviour is unnerving and there are still pieces of Nathan inside him. Pieces that are so much him now that he can't say sometimes what is him and what a remembered memory from a man he killed carelessly and with no remorse.  
He never felt sorry for killing anyone. Not his mother (and he thinks he loved her), not his father (and he could have respected him), not Elle (and she was maybe the only person that loved him for who he was, loved him in spite of everything he was/is). He isn't sorry for killing Nathan. He’s just sorry that he couldn't finish the job. It was Nathan who gave up. It was Nathan who killed himself. He just murdered the body.

~+~  
Maybe it's because he can see Peter how Nathan saw him (for seconds, glimpses of a life he never had and never craved...or so he thinks, maybe he was always envious of other people's lives, maybe he is a liar after all – like his father was).  
Maybe he just can't take the silence anymore (it was easier when he knew that he was alone; this is just torture).

~+~  
It's not difficult to find Peter. He’s usually sitting on the roof of the building in complete silence, his own breathing his only company. The only sound is the rustling of his clothes when he moves to change his position.

“Give it up, man,” he says. Peter keeps silent, of course. He turns around. He isn't afraid of Sylar. He isn't afraid. “Can't go forever without talking to me. You've gone a month. That's impressive. There isn't anybody out there, there will never be,” he adds.

“I won't spend the rest of my life here alone with you,” Peter answers.

“It isn't exactly heaven for me either,” he says, and it's true, but it's still better, so much better than the years he spent alone.  
He takes out the comic and throws it at Peter who catches (years with a brother maybe Sylar doesn't know for sure, but he can imagine). It's 9th Wonders and he never read it and doesn't think he ever will. Peter looks at it briefly and then lets it slip from his fingers.  
It's another small act of cruelty (like the month of silent treatment). And he can't take it anymore. Peter's of course instantly in his face.

“We need to stop messing around and focus,” he says. It's what he believes. Sylar can see it in his eyes.

“Focus? Yeah, so we can rescue...what's her name?” He knows her name, didn't forget. He is just being cruel in return. Taking back the small gesture of...something with his words now.  
Peter punches him in the face. It hurts more than he remembers. He didn't see it coming.

“Emma,” he says in a soft voice (like a lover would, or a mother, maybe). “Her name's Emma.”

  
 **~Chapter four~  
Walking amongst the famous living dead  
**  
~+~  
It seems to Sylar that Peter spends every single minute he can spare trying to break through the wall. They are trapped here now. In Sylar's mind. This place, he made this place and pieces (echoes) of Nathan made this place and now Peter is shaping it as well. Sylar doesn't think Peter does it on purpose, it's just that they are trapped here, his mind mingled with Peter's.  
It's strangely comfortable to know it's Peter. Every other person would do so much damage here, for pure revenge.

~+~  
At first Peter lives in his apartment (for a few days). He doesn't stay too long with Sylar. They meet at the wall, Peter trying to break through, the sledgehammer always on his side. And Sylar doesn't know what to do, as this sheer madness, this driven craziness, this devotion is too familiar, too close to home.  
On the other side, Peter knows. Peter knows this need, this desire to know things. Knows how it ate him alive, how it made him kill, made him crave like a junkie waiting for the next fix.  
After a few months with not nearly enough words spoken between them, Peter just falls asleep on Sylar's couch, curls up like a child who has played too long and become too tired to find his bed.  
Sylar throws a blanket over Peter without touching him and goes to his own bedroom. There’s something familiar about this gesture, but he can't put his finger on it for the first few minutes after he lies down and then it hits him. Really hard. It's what Nathan used to do. And he wants to scream, because he isn’t Nathan, Nathan is dead and he wants the last pieces, ghosts, out of his head.  
He lies there in the dark, just breathing and trying to remember, trying to forget. And still, he’s not sorry. He’s afraid of spending his life here with Peter. (And Nathan. Nathan's memories, Nathan's feelings that aren't his, can never be. He doesn't want them either.)

~+~  
“Are you going to the wall again?” he asks, not even looking up from the book he's reading. Peter doesn't turn at the door. Sylar doesn't expect an answer. He never got one before after all. (He still counts, and he’s asked this question 47 times already and never got an answer).

“What else is there to do?” Peter asks back and before Sylar can look up, surprised, he is gone. The faint sound of the door his only companion for the next hours. Peter never comes back until it's dark and he can't see the wall anymore.

Sylar doesn't go to the wall on a daily bases. He stays in the apartment and reads, goes out to find water and food, fixes watches and clocks. It's like the three years when he was alone.  
Except one thing: When he comes home (He comes home long after dark; after all, there’s nothing to fear here) Peter will be there. Sitting on the floor and reading a book, or lying on the couch, curled up in the blanket Sylar threw over him all these weeks ago, sleeping.  
It's a strange feeling, knowing that Peter doesn't fear him. That he can sleep with Sylar in the same building, the same room even.  
Sometimes Sylar sits on the floor, leaning against the wall, opposite Peter and reads as well. Sometimes when he comes home he freezes in the door to the living room and watches Peter sleep, just for a few seconds, with something like tenderness creeping up on him. He suppresses the feeling in the blink of an eye. He is sure it's not his own. It's Nathan's.

He doesn't think he can take this much longer.

Parkman messed him up so hard. When he thinks of Parkman he wants to kill him and his pretty wife and that cute little boy of his. And then he stomps on these feelings as well. Something inside him laughs: harsh and bitter and taunting. And he wants to slit Nathan's throat again. And again and again.

~+~  
In a way, Nathan's death feels like his own.

~+~  
“What's that?” Peter asks.

Sylar thinks it's pretty obvious. “Coffee,” he says.  
Peter gives him a look, but Sylar just shrugs. It's only coffee, and Peter looks like he might need it.

“It tastes good,” he says after the first sip. “It takes exactly like...” he stops and doesn't look at Sylar, his shoulders rigid. “Don't do that,” he says harshly after a few seconds.

“What?”

“Don't do things he would have known, he would've done!” Peter spits.

“I didn't...” he tries, but he can't say he didn't know, or didn't try, because he did. And Peter knows.

“You're not him!” Peter shouts, getting up. Leaving for the wall maybe.  
Sylar stares at the table and then throws his own mug at the door. It hits just above the bloody hand print, another reminder of failure.

Get out of my head, he thinks. Get out, get out, “Get out!”

~+~  
He can hear Peter banging against the wall, metal on stone. A rhythmic sound, until the sledgehammer becomes too heavy and he has to stop. Drink a bit of water, or lean against the wall to take a deep breath until he can start banging on it again.  
Sylar doesn't think they will be ever able to leave this place. Maybe it's his own fault, as this is his own mind. Maybe he keeps them here. He just doesn't know why he would want to spend the rest of his life here with Peter. Maybe because Nathan does?

~+~  
“You already pulled the trigger!” Sylar spits, and the next thing he knows, his head collides with the wall. It hurts like hell. They are both just men here. No powers. No heroes.

“I'm nothing like you!” Peter hisses in his face and he smiles.

“We’re the same. You wanted to kill him, and you would have. You shot your brother as well,” he says, dangerously low.

“That was not me!”

“It was you! A version of you. And if that version could do it, so can you! And you proved it by pulling that fucking trigger!”

“I didn't kill him,” Peter says, his fingers still digging into Sylar's flesh.

“Just because I stopped you,” he answers, closing his eyes. In retrospect, he can admit that he’s always had a soft spot for Peter. He could’ve killed him, but he didn’t. Arthur wanted him to, but he couldn't, and not only because he thought they were family at that time (it was after he killed his own mother, after all). No, it was something else.  
Peter lets go of him and steps back. He looks wrecked, defeated. He looks the way I feel, Sylar thinks.

~+~  
Peter doesn't come back to the apartment for four days and nights. Sylar can hear him bang against the wall day and night, night and day. He can't block it out. It's always there. A vicious sound that tells him just one thing: I want out of here. Now.  
It's the only feeling Peter has right now.

~+~  
Sylar seeks him out on day five. Peter is pounding the wall like it’s offended him personally. Maybe it has.

“You should eat,” he says. Peter ignores him. Another blow to the wall with the sledgehammer. “Or sleep,” he tries again. Metal on stone is the only answer he gets. “I'm sorry,” he says, but he isn't sure for what.  
There is silence, and he takes a few seconds to register that Peter has stopped banging on the wall and turned around to face him.

“For what?” he asks. Sylar shrugs. He doesn't know. “For WHAT?” Peter shouts.

“I don't know! That we're here, that I made this, that I killed him!” Sylar answers, but it's a lie. He still isn't sorry. It's not that he doesn't want to mean it, he does. It's just that he can't feel it. Not now, not yet, maybe.  
There is a brief flicker of deep and heartbreaking loss behind Peter's eyes, and then something angry settles there instead.

“I don't want to hear that from you,” he answers and then there is metal on stone again and again and again.  
And he knows Peter is done talking for now and maybe for another month or two.

~+~  
He suspects that banging on the wall is a way to deal with the loss for Peter. He can just take out all his frustration and anger and heartbreak on it. It doesn't give. It's eternal like the whole world they are existing in, like the loss Peter is trying to deal with.  
Sylar understands that. It’s in his nature to understand things, so he understands this, but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with the situation.

~+~  
He can't control the small outbreaks of Nathan's memories. He can't and he fucking tries. He does. He can't deal with the feelings he sees flicker behind Peter's eyes.  
He feels guilt. He feels guilt maybe for the first time in his life. Even in the three years he was here alone, he didn't feel guilt. A kind of cold loss, yes. Loneliness, yes of fucking course, but not guilt. He never wished he didn't kill a person. But he wishes he could bring Nathan back, just so he wouldn't have to deal with Peter's feelings, closed off from his own and so different.  
Sylar never loved anyone. He knows that now (he suspected it, but it wasn't something he was concerned about before). Seeing it all makes him want to scream and maybe the loneliness wasn't hell after all, maybe it was just the forecourt of hell. Watching Peter deal with his loss and anger and heartbreak, maybe that’s hell. And maybe he deserves it.  
All of it.

  
 **~Chapter Five~  
The days became endless and harder than tough **

~+~  
“Hey, you should eat,” he says. The day is chilly and the sky is grey. Peter has been banging against the wall for hours now.

“Don't need to eat, don't need to sleep. Don't need anything.” Every sentence is punctuated with another bang against the wall.

“Any progress today?” He knows there is none. Not even a scratch.

“No, it's just like yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that...”

“And the day before that,” Sylar finishes for him.

“It's been...I don't know how long it's been.” He looks up from his watch and at Sylar. “Don't tell me how long it's been,” he says, there is a smile in his voice, wry humour showing through all the anger and determination and loss.

“You can't even scratch it, Peter. I don't know how long you can keep that up,” he replies. Peter needs to see sense here.

“As long as it takes,” Peter answers simply between two sips of water. Sylar could point out that he doesn't need to drink either if his theory is worth anything, but he doesn't want to provoke a fight again. Peter throws a mean punch for such a small guy.

“I know that look,” he says, closing his eyes briefly.

“What look?”

“Like Howie Kaplan beat you at the 50 meter dash and we ran to school every morning. Kept training and kept it up, right?” He says and knows it's the wrong thing to say, as soon as the words are out. But he can't help the things he knows about Peter. Can't help that pieces of Nathan are still inside him. It was not his choice. He didn't want that.

“That's Nathan's memory. That's not yours. I told you to stop doing that,” he says. He's so close Sylar can feel his breath on his face. “You are not him,” he says. There is barely controlled rage underneath the calm surface. And he waits. “You're nothing like him!”  
And there it is.

“So you've told me,” he answers. He steps away, turning. He doesn't know what to do next. He doesn't think any action would be appreciated right now. But he is who he is. And there is no one else to...forgive him, maybe. “Look, Peter. I know that I said it before: I'm sorry. I'm sorry I killed him, I'm sorry I took him from you...” And he means it. He really is sorry for it.

“Sorry?!” Peter shouts, the sledgehammer in his hands again. “You keep saying that: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That doesn't bring my brother back. That doesn't change anything!”

“You're right! Nothing changes! We're stuck here forever. You and me!” He spits, because it's the fucking truth and Peter needs to see that. See life as it is now. There is nothing else here. Not for Sylar and not for Peter. Only pain and loss and everything that is the opposite of forgiveness.  
“I can't take it anymore,” he adds, picking up the other sledgehammer. And he isn't sure what he means. This world, this guilt that is eating him alive and that he wants to get rid of, the look in Peter's eyes. The memories of Peter he has that aren't his (softly whispered 'Pete's and warm bodies lying beside each other on a green and perfect lawn in the sun. Wind against his skin, Peter's arms around his waist. Pillow fights, scrapped knees, fights, stupid stubborn silence, laughs and playing with the dog his dad hated. A whole life lived with someone that loved him, that helped him, that understood him). The feelings that are his?

~+~  
He sees a certain appeal now that he is banging at the wall as well, from dawn to night. It numbs everything else. Mostly. He only feels his sore muscles at the end of the day.  
He slides down the wall and sits down next to Peter. They are mostly silent. Breathing heavily, staring at the sky that doesn't change. Because it's not real.  
Peter said that the only thing that is real is them. And that seems likely now.

~+~  
It numbs the mind and nearly every other feeling. It lets him sleep deeper at night, but not longer.  
He knows that Peter is not counting. He still is, he divided time in before and after. Before Peter and after. The after years are more now.

~+~  
Sometimes he can hear Peter in the living room, shifting and breathing harshly. And it makes him want to take. Makes him painfully aware that no one has touched him since he killed Elle.  
He never found noises erotic. It always had to do with smell and touch and control. Definitely control, to learn how to make something work. Sex was art. Sex _is_ art. Nowadays it's enough to hear the small hitch in Peter's voice and the soft shifting of clothes against skin.  
He doesn't touch himself. He always waits until morning when he can take a shower and the water masks the act.  
It's graceless and fast and not satisfying at all. But there is no one else, except Peter and he killed Peter's brother. Even if they were the last two people on earth (funny thing is, they are right now) Peter would never let him touch.

~+~  
The first time it happens they were fighting and it's harsh and fast and Peter doesn't talk to him for a month afterwards. He is familiar with Peter's moods. So he just waits. He can understand so much more than people think he can. He understands too much and the craving to know more is always, always there, because that's how he was born. He understands Peter's guilt and all the other complex feelings that go hand in hand with Peter letting Sylar touch him.  
Peter spends the whole month on the roof. Not talking, not banging on the wall. Sylar doesn't even know if he sleeps or eats or drinks. According to Peter's theory they don't need to do any of these things. But Sylar is sure that he wouldn't be sane anymore (well, as sane as he can be) if he didn't numb his existence with all these pointless little tasks.  
When he comes back down, he avoids any body contact whatsoever and keeps conversations to a minimum. It's like he counts how many words he needs to use to interact with Sylar and just doesn't say any more than is necessary, like he could take back what he already gave this way.  
Sylar, on the other hand, wants to break Peter apart to know how he works. Wants suddenly to know all the things Nathan knew (even if Nathan didn't know about what makes Peter whine and scream and beg, but he knew where Peter was ticklish or that spot that always makes him tense and then relax, how his lips feel against skin).

~+~  
“Tell me about the first person you killed,” Peter says, he is looking up at the sky. They are both exhausted from hammering against the wall for hours without any break or progress. The sky is nearly black.

“I don't remember his name, he had something I wanted and I killed him. In my apartment. I didn't want to, I mean, I did. But I tried not to want to.”

“I killed Nathan,” Peter says softly.

“You didn't kill Nathan,” Sylar answers. He doesn't think he needs to state the obvious here.

“I did. I killed Nathan. When I was in the future I took your ability. And I killed Nathan, because I wanted to know how he works,” Peter says.  
And there in those simple words is all of Peter's guilt and misery.

“It didn't happen, Peter,” he says, because it's the truth as well as any lie could be the truth, but the truth nevertheless.

“Yeah...”

“We are shaping our own world,” Sylar says and it was never more true than in this moment, now and here.

  
 **~Chapter Six~  
How many forms can indecision take? **

~+~  
With the years, the need to know changes, and with it the need to break something open so he can see how it works.  
He knows maybe everything that there could possibly be to know about Peter; Peter is the only thing he can study. Something outside himself, even if it really isn't outside himself. Still Peter is not something he made. Peter is himself. Like he always was...

“Not true,” Peter says. He is sitting on the floor, his head leaning on the couch, his eyes closed, his legs folded under him. He looks peaceful.

“Hmmm?”

“Not true, I'm not something you didn't make,” Peter clarifies and sits up straight, his arms on both sides of his body, fingers splayed out like stars on the wood. “You made me what I am now,” he says, looking directly at Sylar.  
He doesn't know what to say, because it's true. He did make Peter in some twisted way.

“Not only me,” he says after a too long silence. Peter laughs. It doesn't sound amused, more contemplative.

“Yeah, I know.”

~+~  
“Tell me about your mother,” Peter says one morning, he made coffee, as Sylar stumbles into the kitchen. There is one mug for Sylar as well.

“I killed her,” he answers. That's the most recent memory of her. How she dies, a dull shock in her eyes. Like she never thought he could kill her, do her any harm. “And I wanted to,” he adds. He doesn't think he needs to say it, but he wants to. He doesn't have many secrets left anymore. Peter, on the other hand, has his still.

“I know, I didn't mean that. Tell me about her...” he says, taking a sip of coffee.

“She loved me and thought I was special and she didn't know me at all,” Sylar answers.

“What mother does?” Peter asks with a wry smile. Sylar knows Angela, knows how manipulative she can be and doesn't ask about her.

~+~  
“I loved my dad,” Peter says one evening. They are sitting leaning against the wall, tired to their bones, sure that they will not make any more progress tonight.

“I know,” Sylar says, because he does.

“And still I wanted to kill him...Nathan wanted to be like him,” he says, closing his eyes against the memory.

“You saw him for what he was,” Sylar answers.

“Like ma did,” Peter says.

“You're not like her,” Sylar replies, softly. It's true after all, even if Peter sees people for what they are, he still sees the good they can do, that was there once, could be there again. Peter is able to forgive.

Peter nods. “I know.”

~+~  
It's simultaneously something they do and they don't. After the first time and the weeks of silence after they didn't touch. It's not that Sylar didn't want to. He did.  
After the first touch of skin on skin, how could he not? He knew that Peter was craving it as well. Maybe even for the same reasons. There is a wall between them usually. Maybe it's okay to do it like this, even if it's not enough and he has to bite back Peter's name when he comes in his own hand more and more often. He can't hear anything but Peter’s harsh breathing, and he doesn't know what Peter is biting back in moments like this.

~+~  
When Peter wants to hurt him or punish him for something, maybe for being here in the first place, he talks about Emma. He needs some time to figure out that Peter also does it to rile him up, so that they'll end up against a wall or a couch or a door, too close together and not close enough, breathing hard and harsh and digging fingers into flesh and the only barrier between them clothes and all the unsaid things.

“You need to stop doing that,” Sylar says, as Peter lets go of his arms. He can still feel the pressure and knows there will be bruises soon.

“I know,” Peter answers, stepping back just a bit. Sylar can still feel his breath on his skin and he turns his head.

“I mean it Peter, I'm not going to tolerate this any longer,” he whispers.

Peter takes another step back, clenching his hands to fists on his sides. “It keeps me sane,” he says. And what he means is: You keep me sane.  
Sylar nods. It's not like he didn't know that.

~+~  
“I still want to know how you work,” Sylar says. He has calluses on his fingers from the sledgehammer that lies beside him. It's dark again and the night is moonless, the buildings around them pillars holding an endless, eternal sky. Peter is a dark shadow against an even darker wall.

“I have the same power as you, I only have this one power...” Peter says, he sounds exhausted.

“It's not what I meant. I can't kill people anymore. I _can't_ ,” he answers and he couldn't even before he was trapped in his own mind. He is sure it has something to do with being Nathan for weeks and months. And still having Nathan's memories. “And I couldn't kill you, I could never...” he adds.

“Because you have pieces of Nathan inside you,” Peter says.  
Sylar nods, even if Peter can't see it.

~+~  
A few days later he wakes up curled around Peter on the floor. A blanket around them and he wonders for a few seconds how this happened, but then Peter mumbles he should go back to sleep and he just does.  
It happens again and again. Sometimes they fall asleep against the wall and wake up a few hours later with stiff necks and cracking bones, but warm where their bodies touched.

~+~  
The first time Sylar kisses Peter and Peter lets him is after a particularly bad day. They curl up in Sylar's bed, but stay on their sides, without any contact.  
During the night they shift, because they always do, seeking human warmth and proximity.  
Peter has a nightmare and the first instinct Sylar has is to press his finger to the nape of Peter's neck and stroke softly up and down until the tension sips away. He knows instantly that it's something that Nathan did, would do in such a situation and he pulls back as soon as he realises it. Too late. Peter turns around and looks at him in the darkness of the room that is only illuminated by the moon outside. Their fingers nearly touch on the cotton of the bedsheets. He can feel Peter's breath. Their bodies are just inches apart.

“Nathan used to do that when we were kids,” he says, softly.

“I know,” Sylar answers. He does and Peter does know that he knows, so why lie about it?

“I miss him,” Peter says and it's the first time he says it in exactly these words.

“I'm...” he wants to say that he's sorry again, but Peter interrupts him.

“I know,” he says, and it sounds like whispered heartache. He grabs Peter's arm just to...he doesn't know what he wants to do and then he just leans in and brushes a kiss to Peter's cheek. Peter sighs, but keeps silent otherwise and doesn't pull back, so he kisses his jaw as well and the corner of his lip and then just touches his forehead to Peter's. Peter's hand curls around his wrist and they fall asleep like this.

~+~  
Peter's eyes are always closed. He lacks the heat and strength Elle had, the soft curves and delicate bones beneath soft skin, the wild passion.  
Sylar isn't sure he is holding back or if that's how he is. He has no way of knowing. Peter feels small in his arms, and Sylar feels a need to protect him. It's strange and new and erotic in ways he didn't know.  
It's not that Peter is giving himself over, because he isn’t. He is holding back. Sylar can see it in the lines of his body, in the way he bites his lip (sometimes so hard it bleeds) to keep inside whatever it is that he thinks he needs to keep to himself.  
There’s never anything more than hands and fingers, lips and tongues on skin. Bruises forming on hips and arms and bite marks, blue turning to purple, fading to pale skin again.  
And in the mornings they don't talk about it.

**  
~Chapter Seven~  
I can't not fight now**

~+~  
“It's not about pretending to be with someone else,” Peter says.

“It's about pretending to not be with me,” Sylar says, closing his eyes.

“Yes, it's about that,” Peter answers, taking a sip of his coffee. He sounds disgusted with himself, and Sylar can't take it anymore. He gets up. Peter doesn't ask where he’s going. There is, after all, only one destination.

~+~  
Peter doesn't join him at the wall for the whole day and when he gets back, the apartment is empty. It seems like Peter wasn't there the whole day either. Maybe he is on the roof again. Sylar is too tired to go and look for him. Besides, it's not like Peter doesn't know his way back...here. Even in his mind he shies back from the word 'home'.  
It can't be home if it's not real, can it?

~+~  
A tap to his shoulder and he looks around, just to find a book thrown on his lap from the other side. Siblings, he thinks, do that all the time. He never learned that game, never had siblings to play with.

“Happy birthday,” Peter says, walking by.

“It's not my birthday,” he answers. Peter must know that, right? On the other hand, he doesn't count the days and nights and seconds. He unwraps the book. It's strangely fitting.

“Yeah, I know. You just wore out your other copy and I saw that one digging around,” Peter says. He seems to struggle with something, and then: “ I appreciate your being patient with me,” he says, taking another breath, “and keeping me sane.”

“That's very kind of you Peter, thank you.” He means it, not only the book. Everything. And hopes Peter knows that the same applies to him. He lays the book aside and gets up. Peter has the sledgehammer already in his hands. “You want to know something weird? Every time you pick that thing up, I think you're gonna hit me with it really hard.”  
Peter laughs, looking at the sledgehammer and then back at him.

“That is weird, because every time I pick it up, I feel like I'm gonna hit you with it too... really hard.”

“Why?” It's an easy question after all these years. And there is no one else he can ask it.

“Because you are who you are. I wish I could accept your apologies, but if I forgive you, then I'm not doing right by him,” Peter answers.

“Nathan...“ Of course, he thinks, this was always about Nathan and how he isn't Nathan and never could be. “You feel like if you let go of your anger you'll lose him forever? You held on to it this entire time?” He thinks he should have known. He should, but he didn't.

“I feel it slipping away, but then I look at you. I see you killing him.” Peter answers. “You took my brother away from me,” he adds. And Sylar knows that. He knows, but he can't take this back. He can't bring back the dead. He would, if he had the power, he would. For Peter, he would.  
Peter begins to attack the wall again, it's like he doesn't want to talk about this anymore, but he should know better than that. After all, Sylar will make him listen, he did before. This is not over yet.

“We've been here for I don't know how many years, together.” A lie, he knows exactly how long they've been here. Knows the years, the months, weeks, days, down to the hours. But he is not going to admit it, not now, not ever. “I've changed. I've repented, I'm not ever gonna hurt anyone ever again. And all this time you're afraid to let me go. Peter! I'm not that guy anymore, Peter, you know that.”  
Peter stops banging on the wall. The sledgehammer resting in his hands.

“I know,” he says into the sudden silence, looking at him, “I know you're not.” And then he turns to the wall again and hits it really hard and it gives. Just a bit, but it gives.

In retrospective he knows that Peter was the only person on the planet who could save him. The only person who had the right to kill him and wouldn't. For the greater good, at first and later for himself.  
In this world that they built on rotten pillars, in this world they created for themselves, he was able to save Sylar. More important, maybe, Peter was able to save himself (and he never thought he would feel like this).

~End~


End file.
